


Coup D’état: The World Does Not End

by sweet_mintx



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Complete, F/M, Homophobia, M/M, Romance, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 16:28:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11317266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweet_mintx/pseuds/sweet_mintx
Summary: Grantaire meets Enjolras and thinks he might be looking at the end of the world.Warning: mentions of bullying due to homophobia/transphobia.





	Coup D’état: The World Does Not End

They meet in a collision at the end of the world.

  
He hears waves crash against the proverbial cliffs, but in all honesty, the end was just a flurry of notebooks, the weakly spinning wheels of a bicycle lying on its side, and scraped elbows and scratched knees peeking through roughly ripped jeans. Normalcy would have warranted an apology, a shrug, a fading sting, but this chance encounter was anything but normal—it was a bullet piercing through a carefully constructed past. It was the end of the world.

  
He watches, as he sits on the cool concrete with one knee bent towards his chest, as the bike is pulled upright. A look of electric blue is sent his way—a small upturn of the lips that might have turned the grimace into a smile if it hadn’t been so infinitesimal, so fleeting—before he is greeted by the disappearing silhouette of a yellow-haired male who had welcomed him to the finale with a bleeding elbow and bruised knee.

  
The apocalypse stretches and bends, and he lets time tick on until weeks blur into each other. The young man who had so unapologetically and quite literally crashed into his life does not become a fading memory. He lets him become a steadfast idea that unravels the bandages keeping the pieces of his heart together—a heart so battered and worn from being taught that it doesn’t deserve to beat for others. The world had long stopped pretending to care about his feelings, but he continues to long for the silly _maybe_ the world had never granted him.

  
***

  
They meet in a whirlwind of sights—scents—noises—and he cannot feel anything but the warm fingers wrapped around his hand, gripping and grounding him. The din of the world around them fades in and out like the nauseating rolls of thunder, and he fights through the overwhelming sensation to keep himself in the present.

  
“Let me guess,” he breathes once he finds his voice. He lets go of the handshake and steps back, spreading his arms wide—palms facing up in an almost reverent manner.

  
“You were the face that launched a thousand ships. The catalyst of the Trojan War.” He swallows and pastes on a smile, eyes sparkling conspiratorially as he lowers his voice into a stage whisper. He gives the blond hair and startling blue irises a once over and continues. “One half of the pair of lovers who destroyed the world. Tell me, my dear friend, is your name _Helen_?”

  
The vibrations of amused laughter brush against his skin and a hand is waved nonchalantly. “Unfortunately, no.”

  
He is awarded by a smile that cuts like diamond. The world tilts on its axis, and he briefly wonders if it is about to crash and roll across the linoleum floor.

  
“I wasn’t aware our new friend is a lover of Greek mythology,” comes the reply a second later. “My name is Enjolras. It’s nice to meet you.”

  
_Enjolras._ The name imprints itself into his skin. He stares, unblinking, for a brief second before letting out a disbelieving laugh—a little relieved, a little hysterical.

  
“And may I ask for your name?”

  
His lips curl into a grin. “A pleasure. My name is Grantaire.”

  
***

  
They meet with a clap of thunder and Grantaire watches, transfixed, as the storm clouds roil darkly behind Enjolras’s eyes. His breath hitches when he sees not despair but hope burning fiercely in his irises, and even as the world crumbles around the two of them, Grantaire draws closer. They say people are attracted to what they lack, and perhaps the searing faith that scorches Grantaire’s skin when his arm brushes against Enjolras’s is what had been stolen from him so long ago.

  
But Grantaire doesn’t let himself hope. Hope is a dangerous thing—a tempting, fickle mistress batting her eyelashes at Grantaire until he lets her into his bed. He doesn’t let himself hope, but his eyes search for Enjolras in the traffic of students hustling to and from class. The crowd is unrelenting and sluggish—as if moving in some parody of slow motion—but it misses the moment Grantaire stops pretending the barricade built around his heart was impenetrable. Enjolras sits atop a stout, concrete wall, legs crossed at the ankles and the world slips away for a moment as Grantaire stays rooted where he is: yards—meters—miles—years away from Enjolras. A phantom hand wraps wily fingers around his esophagus and squeezes.

  
It’s almost comforting—the pseudo-silence that blankets itself gently over Grantaire’s hazy mind, tricking him into believing that maybe his heart did have the privilege to beat for others and that maybe the rest of the world did not have to exist.

A snicker and punch lands on his consciousness, and he is torn crudely out of his reverie. It’s meant to be playful—maybe—but his forearm smarts from where the fist connected with it. The scene playing before his eyes is disorienting—his fabricated peace of mind replaced by the cold, grey slush pushing against the toes of his boots.

  
“Has Paris found his Helen at last?”

  
The words twist nastily, laced with distaste, and curl until they settle somewhere in the center of Grantaire’s chest. He flinches, mind flashing to scrapes on knees and elbows store-bought Band-Aids were never large enough to cover. He thinks he might recognize the face of the speaker, but visages have since fused into one cruel mask of disgust.

  
He tries to register the warning—tries to remember the fall of Troy, and the foolish young love that had offended the gods and goddesses, and the Trojan War, and the love that was never meant to be—but he begins to feel the voices blur—meld—distort. A wave of nausea sweeps over him, and he barely hears the fading footsteps, his mind feeling oddly disconnected from his body.

  
The clouds no longer smother the sky, but Grantaire’s thoughts swirl into a colorful, murky mess. There’s a hurricane closing in on him, but his body is too littered with battle scars to even try to put up a fight. He closes his eyes and lets himself succumb—  
—a light hesitant tap on his shoulder—  
—Enjolras’s stormy blue eyes—a pulse steadily beating underneath his cold fingertips, fighting its way into eternity—a smile flashing red—

  
The war was over, the battle lost, and Paris should never have been born but he had been given permission to live, and if Herophile prophesized that his existence would wreak havoc upon the world then so be it. They meet with a clap of thunder—a collision at the end of the world.

  
***

  
The storm doesn’t recede, and Grantaire catches the ashes of the world on his tongue. Time continues to warp, and during stolen seconds he begins to learn the workings of Enjolras’s brain. He memorizes the names scrawled into the gyri— _Eponine, Combeferre, Courfeyrac_ —and finds treasure troves of anecdotes about Enjolras’s friends. When he digs deeper, he discovers that tucked between the hippocampus and the amygdala is the future of the world—so blindingly bright that Grantaire closes his eyes the first time he finds it. Sometimes, when Enjolras lets the future materialize into words and animated gestures, Grantaire smiles sadly and tries not to think about how Enjolras is a bit like Icarus—the wax on his quivering feathers about to yield to the merciless laws of the universe.

  
They have good days and they have bad days. On the bad days, Grantaire drinks a little too much and argues with Enjolras until he leaves to chain smoke out of a window. Grantaire rests his head against a worn out pillow and lets his memories swirl and flood through his mind like a mess of a Van Gogh painting— _it’s just a broken institution, it’s ju—brok—stitu—just_. When Enjolras returns, Grantaire is still wandering somewhere in the past, but he instinctively reaches out and takes Enjolras’s hand, pressing fingers into his palm as if trying to tell him that once upon a time he had tried—really—to believe.

  
***

  
Grantaire worries—as he watches the smoke at the end of Enjolras’s cigarette curl towards the thick, grey sky—that one day, Enjolras will burn out. He worries that one day, Enjolras will wake up only to find that his eyes can no longer blink away the weariness settling into their inner corners, and that his mind no longer has the energy to play the zero sum game with hope. Grantaire worries that one day, Enjolras will soar much too close to the sun and fall much too quickly towards the sea because gravity is cruel and the universe has never been kind to Grantaire. Perhaps the world is worth saving, but the feat itself is impossible, and this time Enjolras does not have Medea to help him—just Grantaire by his side, intermittently tugging the limply hanging cigarette out from between Enjolras’s fingers.

  
Grantaire is terrified that Enjolras will shatter under the weight of the world and that he will be unable to piece him back together, so he breathes cynicism into their whispered conversations. The look in his eyes is more than a little sad when he mutters for the hundredth time, “I can’t believe in the good of humanity.”

  
_“Why?”_

  
***

  
The coming of the end of the world perverts time, and when Grantaire closes his eyes and lets himself fall back against the slightly tussled covers of a soft duvet, he lands in a Technicolor version of his past—all methodical sweeping of prejudice underneath pristinely made beds, all hidden skeletons hanging in the back of closets, and a system functioning on the shattered ideals of young children.

  
He witnesses with bated breath currents swallowing anyone who tried to swim in the other direction—the waves strong, foreboding, and overwhelming—and he re-unearths the animosity that remained a steadfast presence, manifesting itself in crude jokes, post-it notes on his locker, and comments made by parents laced with concern that tasted a little like artificial sweetener.

  
Time twists again, and he is sucked farther into the wormhole, and this time he sees black and white. Heavy, unlocked chests are pulled out from beneath the beds and dusted off—the past devouring any progress that had been made. He re-realizes that the past had never left—would never leave—and that it would follow him and every other member of this society around for the rest of this world’s days.

  
_It must be liberating_ ¸ Grantaire re-thinks, as he re-watches his friends tear into a kid who had stopped wearing dresses at ten years old and began wearing clothes left behind by an older brother.

  
He watches all the repulsion and disgust begin to spill over and threaten to drown anyone who tried to break free from this suffocating, homogenous community. He watches as kids are left crying in front of bathrooms they couldn’t enter, left broken in front of people they couldn’t love. He watches as the past sweeps in, dark cloak wrapping around his spirit, and closes his eyes to its gentle murmurings.

  
***

  
“Isn’t it a little fucked up when a kid you don’t know at all calls you in the middle of the night and tells you that he’s scared, and that he doesn’t know who else to call? Isn’t it a little fucked up to know that you, a total, utter stranger is his last resort and _his best fucking chance_?”

  
There’s fluid slowly filling Grantaire’s lungs and he struggles to stay afloat, eyes blindly fixating on a poster hanging off of Enjolras’s wall. A soft face with stern lines etched around lips that are weathered with age looks down at him, the words _it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird_ underlining the portrait. He swallows as he feels his mind reel back the film, digging up memories and a narrative he’d tried so hard to bury.

  
“Two weeks. Six fractured ribs and a broken wrist.”

  
The words roll off Grantaire’s tongue with surprising ease, but a rotten taste lingers in his mouth. Somehow, these words have become a statistic on a website—dehumanized—dissected—unrecognizable. It is no longer a person bearing these injuries, but an icon, a “tragedy,” a name in serif font printed on a newspaper his parents clucked their tongues over and his parents’ friends shook their heads at.

  
Grantaire doesn’t tell Enjolras about the other injuries—the ones you couldn’t see as well, the ones that only made themselves known when you look deeply into somebody’s eyes and realize that you couldn’t find anything left in them.

  
He’d seen them—sees them, oh God, he sees them—when he stumbled into the hospital room, dully registering a mother silently weeping at one side of the room. The bright lights were jarring, the white walls harsh, and every fiber of his body told him to turn around and run away. He’d seen them when he mustered up the courage and gingerly picked up the boy’s hand and grasped it as tightly as he dared, muttering _I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry_ again and again under his breath until he wasn’t sure to whom he was saying those words anymore. He’d seen them when the boy turned his head and flinched when he saw Grantaire sitting by his bed, instinctively shifting away as if he thought Grantaire was there to hurt him. As if he thought everyone in the world was there to hurt him.

  
It was like, along with his bones, the universe had also broken his resolve to live, and Grantaire felt his own hold on the world threaten to shatter.

  
“The world had pretended to care, but they let him fall.” _Because it never really cared._

  
“Ah.” There is a pause and Grantaire feels time slow as he waits for Enjolras to speak again. “But you care. You care, and I care, and so there must be other people who care. And we will be the ones to rewrite the future, because we care.”

  
***

  
The past never really lets go of Grantaire—it follows him around as he steps out of his apartment, pressing its lips against his ear, whispering to him horribly sweet things until he refuses to drink anything but black coffee and _just tea please, no milk or sugar_. But, he learns to order atrociously sweet vanilla lattes for Enjolras, and watches fondly as he inhales the sugary, poor excuse for coffee.

  
The weather remains cruel, the chill nipping against his skin as the sun struggles to fight its way out from behind the clouds, but he barely registers the cold. Perhaps Enjolras had rewired the workings of Grantaire’s brain, because soon he begins to find names traced into the folds of his consciousness and a small, weak flame nursing its way into existence. Sometimes, Grantaire sees Combeferre press a kiss to the corner of Eponine’s lips and catches himself smiling when he can almost hear the laugh bubbling from Eponine’s throat. He thinks about how half a century ago, one of them could’ve gone to prison, and the other could’ve been lynched—all over a seven-lettered polymer—and wonders if this is what progress looks like—sheer, unadulterated love, affection, acceptance.

  
When he lets Enjolras’s hand slide into his, he notices that Enjolras’s hair is dusted with white. It takes him a moment—Enjolras stretches out his other hand to catch something in his palm—but he realizes that it is not ash falling from the sky, but snow.

  
***

  
_The rational thing to do would be to take baby steps. You know what I mean? Like, toe at the lines until we smudge the chalk and have an excuse to redraw the line. But will that be enough? Will that ever be enough? Who’s to say that society will not fight back—tear skin and hearts and families and friends—even at the smallest trigger? It won’t hesitate to jump at the first chance it gets to shatter our beliefs, and then there will be no line to toe, no chalk to smudge, and we’ll all be back at square one—boxed in all four sides by sheets of concrete. So then we have a dilemma—do we charge into battle, unprepared, or do we spend our entire life preparing and miss the battle?_

  
_We have to at least try, right? That’s how change works—we keep trying and trying until society evolves enough to accommodate new ideas. The fight can’t just be in courts: legislations, dispositions—they all have to change. The fight’s got to be in the streets, in the classrooms, at the freaking dinner table over chicken parm or something. We can’t fight fair—society doesn’t fight fair. It drafts commandments to follow by, but ignores them in the face of change, vying instead for complacency at the cost of civil liberties._

  
_Perhaps the revolution will fail—maybe the revolution was always destined to fail—but perhaps, no listen to me, just perhaps, we will have carved a path into the earth too deep to be covered up._

  
The grin on his face is blinding. His eyes flash lightning, electricity breaking past the grey, ashy clouds.

  
_Viva la revolucion._

  
Time slows, and then stills—a snapshot of the moment kept in the treasure chest of history. Somewhere in a different dimension, there is a guttural sound, a violent tremor, and a crack appears in the ground. It’s never written down in history books, but this is the moment the path of humanity is altered, by soft words uttered as the past rejects the past and the present surges into the future.

  
There’s a look in Grantaire’s eyes—incomprehensible. In that moment, as Enjolras turns towards him with so much hope, so much faith, Grantaire says, “I believe.”

  
***

  
They have good days and they have bad days. On the good days, Enjolras chooses to ignore Grantaire’s maudlin comments about them each choosing their own poison. “Alcohol,” he gestures to himself, “nicotine,” at Enjolras—he grins—“love,” at the both of them.

  
After a while, Enjolras quits smoking.

  
“Bad for the environment,” he says in reply to Grantaire’s raised eyebrow at the trashcan filled with unopened cigarette boxes. Soon, Grantaire quits drinking, but the two of them never quit anything else.

  
***

  
The past bends before snapping in half, and Grantaire picks up the two pieces, turning them over in his palms and ignoring the way the sharp edges draw blood to his skin. He gathers up all the despair and the pain and the kids left on the outskirts of history and lets them rest deep in his chest.

  
_I want kids to know that there is a future worth fighting for and that even if the universe is cruel there are people in it who are kind. I want them to know that even when everything’s falling to pieces and it feels like the world will crash and burn, there are adults who are there with heavy duty duct tape to keep it all together. I want them to know that it’s okay to fight for safety and for acceptance, and I want them to know that they have a right to_ life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  
And Grantaire goes on, uttering soft words in a small bedroom—walls painted anything but white—and consequently wreaking havoc into the order of the world. He goes on, letting the flame in his chest overwhelm him—burning and incinerating memories rotten after being buried for too long, but he keeps the ashes. He builds dreams and futures and tucks them away in his own mind, and he looks at Enjolras like there is hope in the world and that hope is almost something tangible and that he is touching it as he trails his fingers along Enjolras’s arm.

  
As Grantaire drafts out a world that perhaps wouldn’t exist in their lifetime, this century, or maybe even the next, but definitely— _definitely_ —in the one after that, he thinks that perhaps the bad days aren’t so bad anymore.

  
A hand had been outstretched—an invitation extended—a question asked. The past was invited to run along with the future, and he had accepted.

  
The world does not end.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for a school magazine with Enjolras/Grantaire in mind, but written with the names Jason and Paris (Jason being Enjolras, Paris being Grantaire). My first work for the Les Mis fandom and it's been a very long time since I've written. It's kind of a great feeling. I hope you enjoyed it!


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